What Does ‘Equal Rights’ Mean?

The concept of rights has been turned upside-down in recent years, as the traditional notion of natural rights inhering in the individual has been replaced with a Progressive understanding of rights emanating from the state.

The Washington Post reports, for example, that “gay groups and liberal legal scholars say they are prevailing” in lawsuits against private individuals and companies that do not offer services to homosexuals “because an individual’s religious views about homosexuality cannot be used to violate gays’ right to equal treatment under the law.” The article cites several businesses, including a psychologist and a photographer, that have been penalized in the courts for offering their services only to heterosexuals. And it accepts that there is a fundamental “right to be free from discrimination” that clashes with other, more traditional rights.

But what fundamental rights are harmed if a psychologist or photographer chooses one client over another–whether for religious reasons or more mundane reasons like his bottom line? Is there really a natural “right to counseling” that imposes on psychologists the obligation to take any patient? Is there really a God-given “right to have your picture taken” that imposes on photographers the obligation to snap pictures of all comers? And is there really a “right to be free from discrimination?”

There are, in fact, no such natural rights. As with any “right” that imposes an obligation on another individual, these are inventions of the state, more akin to entitlements than to anything described in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The “right to be free from discrimination” is more a social ideal, a goal for interpersonal interaction, than it is a description of a core characteristic of a human individual, like property ownership or speech. In fact, since these social “rights” impose obligations on others, they tend to infringe upon individual liberty, for instance the freedom of a service provider to specialize his practice. Far from securing “equal treatment under the law,” this tends to create special legal privileges for some and special legal obligations for others.

The psychologist and photographer in question were almost certainly in the wrong. In most cases it would be uncouth to turn away a customer simply because of an objection to his sexual preferences (or race or any other immutable characteristic), even if that objection is grounded in the sincerest religious or moral belief. But to do so is merely rude, not a violation of the customer’s fundamental rights as a human being. It is in fact a violation of the provider’s liberty for the government to enforce an invented right in the name of equality and prevention of discrimination. A better solution than turning to government would rely on two time-tested methods to set things straight: shame and the provider’s bottom line. If you don’t like how the provider runs his business and chooses his clients, you are free to criticize him and take your business elsewhere.